NAIROBI: A showdown looms in Kenya between the government and the opposition after the country’s police chief warned stern action against the opposition party’s planned countrywide mass protests.
Kenya’s opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) said the mediation efforts with the government over Kenya’s flawed Dec. 27 elections have collapsed and it is now calling for mass rallies across the country next week.
ODM Secretary-General Anyang Nyongo called for Kenyans in towns around Kenya to gather for three days of protests starting on Wednesday.
The party’s move sparked off an immediate rejection from the police Major General Mohammed Hussein Ali who warned that the countrywide rallies would not be allowed to take place.
General Ali said in a statement received here on Saturday that a ban on all political meetings, rallies and demonstrations issued late December was still in force, and warned that any such mass action events remained illegal.
“We have in accordance with the law the option, in the interest of security, to cancel such meetings if we think they will contravene general security,” he said.
“It is on this basis that we do not think it is appropriate for them to hold the meeting at this time,” the police chief said. The opposition party has twice failed to hold similar demonstrations after the security forces engaged them in running battles on separate days, barring them from holding what they termed as “peaceful demonstrations.” Leaders of the opposition laid blame for the country’s political deadlock in the lap of President Mwai Kibaki’s government which says the opposition should bring its complaints to court.
Opposition leaders say the vote count, which has been surrounded by allegations of rigging, was a violation of the constitution and that the courts are in Mr. Kibaki’s pocket.
Speaking separately, government spokesman Alfred Mutua said plans by the movement to hold the rally were a serious breach of the law considering a ban was still in force.
“The government has noted with concern that Raila Odinga and ODM have called for breaking of law and mass action. This is illegal,” Mr. Mutua said.
He accused the ODM leaders of propagating wrangling in the country at a time when the nation needed healing from the post- election violence visited on various parts of the country, killing nearly 500 persons and displacing more than 250,000.
The rally comes as the former U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, who is leading a panel of African mediators attempting to resolve the crisis, has appealed to all sides for restraint.
Mr. Annan called on “all Kenyan leaders, government as well as the opposition in the country to avoid any measures or steps that would further compromise, the search for an amicable solution to the country’s crisis” in a statement issued on Friday. “Political negotiation is not an event, it is a process that can take a very long time, or a short time — all depends on the cooperation of the leaders,” Mr. Annan said after holding talks with AU chairman and Ghanaian President John Kufuor.
The talks were initiated by the AU chairman, who left the country on Thursday after two days of unsuccessful efforts to put the two leaders on a round table. The former U.N. chief said he had already begun talking to the other members of the panel — Graca Machel, wife of the former South African President Nelson Mandela, and former Tanzanian President Ben Mkapa — about setting up a secretariat for the Kenya mediation mission.
“I regard it as a great responsibility and we’ll take it seriously in order to restore stability and quickly end the humanitarian crisis in that country,” Mr. Annan added.
AU chief Kufuor dismissed suggestions that his own trip to Kenya failed to achieve any meaningful results.
The Ghanaian leader said it had succeeded in getting Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga to agree to end violence, recognise the need for dialogue and accept the idea of working with the panel to be headed by Mr. Annan.
“I did not go there expecting to use the two days to restore total peace in Kenya. It’s not a one-day job. That’s impossible,” Mr. Kufuor reportedly said. — Xinhua
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